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Mac hard drive recovery 5 minute read

External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac – How to Recover?

Updated on June 27th, 2022
Vishal
Written By
Vishal
Rohit Arora
Approved By
Rohit Arora

Summary: In this blog, we’ll share different methods to address the ‘external hard drive not showing up on Mac’ issue on macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina and other lower versions. Download the free-to-try Mac data recovery software to recover your lost data from external hard drive on Mac.

External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac – How to Recover?

“Hi friends, when I connected my 2 TB Seagate external hard drive after a long time on my MacBook Air (running on macOS Monterey, Big Sur, or Catalina), the drive did not show up in the Desktop or Finder sidebar. This drive has all my important digital memories. Could anyone please help me out to recover my data from the drive? Thanks.”

When you connect an external hard drive to your Mac running on macOS Monterey, Big Sur, or Catalina, the storage drive may not show up on Desktop, Finder, or even on the Disk Utility app due to several reasons.

Contents

  • Common Reasons for External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac
  • Methods to fix the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac
  • Tips to Prevent Permanent Data Loss on External Hard Drive not showing up on Mac
  • Conclusion

Common Reasons for External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac

  • USB connectivity problem
  • Not setting preferences in macOS
  • Partition map damage
  • Device incompatibility
  • Physical damage on a hard drive

Methods to fix the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac

The next sections describe multiple troubleshooting methods to fix the ‘external drive not showing up on Mac’ issue on macOS.

1. Check the USB Connectivity

Your external hard drive may not be connected properly to the USB port present on your MacBook Air, iMac, or Mac mini. Try the following steps:

  • Try reconnecting the drive to the same or another compatible USB port.
  • If that doesn’t fix the issue, try changing the USB cable and reconnect.
  • If you have another Mac, then even try connecting the external drive to it.

2. Enable visibility of external hard drive not showing up on Mac

In macOS Monterey, Big Sur, or Catalina, you need to enable the visibility of external disks. For setting your preferences, do the following:

  • Go to Finder > Preferences > General. Under ‘Show these items on the desktop’, check the ‘Hard disks’ and ‘External disks’ checkboxes.
 Enable visibility of external hard drive
  • Similarly, go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar. Under ‘Show these items on the sidebar’, check the ‘Hard disks’ and ‘External disks’ checkboxes.
external hard drive visibility on Mac
  • Also, go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, to view all mountable and non-mountable drives, go to View > Show All Devices.
External Drive Visible - Disk Utility

3. Update macOS

Try updating your macOS Monterey, Big Sur, or Catalina to fix subtle issues of external hard drive connectivity. But before that, back up your Macintosh HD by using Time Machine to avoid any data loss. Ensure your Time Machine drive is connected to your Mac. Go to Time Machine > Back Up Now. Once the backup is taken, perform the following steps to update your macOS.

  1. Go to Apple menu > System Preferences.
  2. In the System Preferences window, click Software Update.
  3. In the Software Update window, let macOS to check for updates.
  4. When updates are available, click Update Now.
  5. Click Download and Restart. Wait till the update is over.
Update macOS

4. Repair external hard drive by using Disk Utility

When your Mac is not recognizing the external hard drive, use Disk Utility to mount and repair the unrecognized external drive. The steps are as follows:

  1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities. Double-click Disk Utility to launch it.
  2. If Disk Utility lists the external hard drive in gray, then select your external hard drive from the sidebar.
  3. From the top pane, click the Mount tab to mount your unmounted external hard drive.
  4. If the drive is yet inaccessible, click the First Aid tab from the top pane, then click Run to initiate the external hard drive repair process.
  5. Wait till Disk Utility repairs your external hard drive. If Disk Utility fails, it will show a message that the drive can’t be repaired and you need to back up and replace the drive.
Repair external hard drive by using Disk Utility
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5. Repair external hard drive by using Terminal full disk access

When Disk Utility can’t repair your external hard drive, use your Terminal application available in macOS to mount and repair the affected drive. The steps are as follows:

  1. Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities. Double-click Terminal to launch it.
  2. At the command line, type diskutil list, then hit Return. Note disk# of the external hard drive.
  3. Type diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk#, then hit Return.
  4. Type diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk#. then hit Return.
  5. When the repair process is completed, go to Terminal > Quit Terminal.
Repair external hard drive by using Terminal

6. Erase the external hard drive not showing up on Mac

In case the external drive’s data is not accessible due to file system corruption, you can still recover the data by using a data recovery software for Mac.

After recovering the inaccessible data, erase the drive by using Disk Utility to fix any logical issues. Finally, restore the recovered data to the external hard drive.

7. Replace the external hard drive not showing up on Mac

If your external hard drive is not visible in Disk Utility even if you have chosen the Show All Devices option in the View tab, then the drive may have undergone physical damage. You need to replace the inoperative drive with a new one.

Note: To recover data from a dead hard drive, get in touch with a data recovery service provider.

Tips to Prevent Permanent Data Loss on External Hard Drive not showing up on Mac

  • Implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy (3 copies of data on 2 different storage media with 1 copy offsite) to safeguard against any data loss incident.
  • Do not erase the external hard drive straight away if it is not recognized by your Mac unless you recover that data by using a Mac data recovery software.

Learn More: Worst Mac Hard Drive Problems And Solutions

Conclusion

The blog highlighted common reasons for troubleshooting strategies to resolve the ‘external hard drive not showing up on Mac’ issue. To perform any critical troubleshooting process, back up your drive. In case of data loss, do not lose hope. Recover your lost data by using a Stellar Data Recovery Professional for macOS Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, or earlier. The Mac data recovery software supports a variety of storage devices including external hard drives formatted with APFS, HFS+, HFS, NTFS, FAT, and ex-FAT file systems. The software is available for a free trial.

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About The Author

Vishal

Vishal is a data recovery expert @Stellar. He addresses data loss scenarios on a Mac. He intends to help people solve their macOS problems. Besides, Vishal prefers to read about astronomy and autobiography, and his favorite is Steve Jobs - The man who thought different written by Karen Bluementhal.

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14 comments

  1. Benson says:
    May 16, 2022 at 8:32 am

    I have a Toshiba 2 TB external hard drive which I was earlier using on Windows system and the drive also having my Windows data backup. However, now when I’m connecting the same to my mac system, it is not showing up! Will surely give a try to above methods & see if that will be of any help!!!

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      May 16, 2022 at 8:33 am

      Hi Benson,

      Sure, you can try the above methods however, as you were using the drive earlier on Windows OS then you might need to check the file system of the storage drive. If the drive is NTFS, it won’t be accessed on macOS. If it needs to be operated on both Windows & macOS, it needs to be FAT or ExFAT.

      Hope this information will be helpful!

      Reply
  2. Sam says:
    April 11, 2022 at 11:22 am

    I recovered data with the help of your Stellar data recovery professional for mac software from my SanDisk external hard drive that was not showing up in my MBP. However, some image files are corrupted but that was not so important for me so I avoid. But, in case if I required those images will your software help to fix the corruption on recovered image files???

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      April 18, 2022 at 11:56 am

      Thanks for sharing your feedback, Sam. Stellar Data Recovery Premium for Mac allows user to repair their corrupt photo or video files.

      Reply
  3. Aaron says:
    February 25, 2022 at 9:56 am

    I have Kingston USB pen drive that is not showing up on my mac. Are the methods shared above can be applied on that as well?

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      February 25, 2022 at 10:07 am

      Hi Aaron,

      Yes, the Stellar data recovery tool helps users to retrieve data from USB storage drives!

      Reply
  4. Rana says:
    January 15, 2021 at 4:37 pm

    Hi, None of the above steps worked for me. I connected my external drive with a Windows computer and it asked me to scan the disk. After scan, the external drive was accessible in Windows. Then I connected it with Mac and it worked. I used to hate Windows but in this situation, it rescued me while mac was a total failure.

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      January 19, 2021 at 11:25 am

      Hi Rana, if all the steps did not work in your case then you should put your query on mac forum community. They will assist you in a better way in deep detail. Thanks

      Reply
  5. Madhavi Ala says:
    August 23, 2020 at 3:32 am

    It helps lot. Thank you Sir

    Reply
  6. Alexandra says:
    August 12, 2020 at 2:54 pm

    Hello,

    This helped me locate it! Thank you so much!

    Reply
  7. Ellen Ray says:
    March 20, 2019 at 11:31 am

    Can the non-accessibility of external HDD is due to faulty cables?

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      March 25, 2019 at 4:55 am

      Hello Ellen,

      Very high chance of this kind of problem. Kindly replace and check. Other than that please also check your connecting ports.

      Reply
  8. Darren Clark says:
    February 26, 2019 at 10:59 am

    Hey Author,

    What is the difference between you Stellar Data Recovery Mac Professional & Premium version?

    Reply
    1. Vishal says:
      February 28, 2019 at 4:31 am

      Hello Darren,

      Stellar Data Recovery Mac Professional is a reliable data recovery tool which recovers all lost/deleted files from Mac OS.
      On the other end, the Premium version is a more advanced version combining Data Recovery Mac software with repairing of photos & videos files.

      Reply

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Table of Contents    arrow

  1. Common Reasons for External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac
  2. Methods to fix the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Mac
  3. Tips to Prevent Permanent Data Loss on External Hard Drive not showing up on Mac
  4. Conclusion

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